A number of state Republican lawmakers have signed a letter urging Pennsylvania’s federal delegation to object to the outcome of the presidential election.
The letter to the representatives and senators who represent the state in Washington D.C. was only signed by one Bucks County-based GOP state lawmaker, which was State Rep. Craig Staats, of Richland Township.
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An initial version of the letter sent to the media and public listed several other Bucks County Republican state lawmakers as signing on, but it was later corrected to remove them after spurring confusion.
“I did not sign onto that letter. It was a clerical mistake made in Harrisburg,” State Rep. Todd Polinchock, a Republican from Warrington Township, wrote in a Facebook post Friday evening.
Republican State Rep. Frank Farry, of Langhorne Borough, declined to comment on the letter. He did not sign the letter.
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The letter signed by more than 60 Republicans, including some of the top lawmakers in the state House, asks for the state’s congressional delegation to reject electoral college votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
“We the undersigned members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly urge you to object, and vote to sustain such objection, to the Electoral College votes received from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” the lawmakers put in their call to dispute the votes.
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The conservative lawmakers based their argument in claims that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and others “set about undermining the many protections provided under this law” leading up to the election. The 2019 voting law that allowed mail-in and absentee voting received bipartisan support.
On Thursday, several top Republican lawmakers in Harrisburg wrote in a memo that the state legislative body had no authority to “override the will of the people as evidenced by the popular vote.”
The memo upset Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
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“I’m ashamed of them,” he wrote in response on social media.
Friday’s letter to the federal delegation asking them to object to the election results came the day after the comments from Giuliani and his team.
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Pennsylvania’s certified election results put Biden about 81,000 votes ahead of President Donald Trump. Biden also won Bucks County.
The Trump campaign, allies, and some state lawmakers have pushed claims of widespread voter fraud, but many of their claims have been debunked or not made into courtrooms. Local, state, and federal law enforcement have not found any widespread voter fraud in the state as of Friday.
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The heads of the Bucks County Democratic and Republican parties have commended the county for the way the election was handled.
This week, high-profile supporters of the president, including his former National Security Advisor, have called for the government to impose military control over the nation and “suspend the Constitution” due to Trump losing the election, according to NPR and comments on social media from the supporters.
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On Friday, Republican state lawmakers also sent letters calling for state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, to appoint an independent prosecutor to review the election and one to the state inspector general’s office to review the Pennsylvania Department of State’s rules and policies during the election.
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